Loveboat in 서울

𝟞

There's no chance to ask Sohee about the 𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕓𝕠𝕒𝕥 in private.

Potted plants divide the spacious, sunlit lobby into lounge areas furnished with chairs sculpted from twists of cherry-brown tree roots. Sohee and I join the back of a line to a registration desk. On the wall, six clocks made of polished cuts of driftwood display times In Los Angeles, New York, London, Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo.

All around us, more kids drop suitcases, saying to one another, "Don't I know you from DVHS?" A guy in a Stanford T-shirt fist-bumps another guy half a head shorter: "Yo, saw you in SoCal! Sorry, man, next time!" Three girls in near-identical pastel picnic dresses fall into each other's arms, squealing, "How've you beeeen? Did you see Subin's here, too?" Even Sohee reunites briefly with girls from something called a Center for Talented Youth summer camp.

"How do so many people here know each other?" I ask Sohee.

"It's that six degrees of separation thing. Only for us, it's like, two degrees, know what I mean?"

I don't. I don't know a soul here, but in this moment, the loneliness I feel is overridden by the larger strangeness of blending in. In the mall back home, heads sometimes turned when I walked by with my family, but now, my Asian Americanness is invisible, erased like a shaken Etch A Sketch. It's an unexpected relief.

As we inch forward, Jungwoo walks toward us from the opposite direction, balancing a tray of plastic cups. Sohee grabs two, along with fat straws. "Classic," she says. "I hate all the syrups people put in nowadays." Dark brown marbles revolve lazily in the bottom third of a coffee-and-cream liquid. A plastic film seals its top.

"What's this?" I ask, wondering the flavor.

"Bubble tea!" Sohee jabs her straw through the film and sucks up the marbles. "You seriously never had it? Milk tea with tapioca pearls."

"I've heard of it." I'm wary—I've never drunk anything swirling with solids. But I imitate her, puncturing my top more forcibly then I intend, making Sohee laugh. I suck in a mouthful of cold, sweet tea, punctuated by the chewy spheres. "Oh. It's good."

Sohee laughs again. "Suzy. You're a Twinkie."

I frown. Like the Hostess desserts—white inside, yellow outside? Jenny Tran from my youth group would come out swinging if anyone used that term on her, but I'm not mad. Just defeated . . . again. Even among a horde of Korean Americans, I'm not Korean American enough. A sudden burst of missing Sihyeon weakens my knees.

Then a shuffle of guys descend on us: tall, short, lean, heavy, hairy—even a mustache and scary goatee. They ask our names and I find they all share two things in common: they're top college-bound (UCLA, Penn, Stanford, MIT, Yale) and they're sweating as much as I am. The humid air practically licks me. The male attention, the eager-eye smiles and handshakes—it's all a little overwhelming.

Two girls stop to introduce themselves. "Hi, I'm Sulli Choi." A girl with a pixie-cut hair offers a firm handshake.

"I'm Krystal Jung," says her friend in a baseball cap.

"We're Presidential Scholars," says Sulli. "We met int Washington."

"We met the President of the United States."

"That's how we got invited on this trip."

"Oh, Jinri-ah, we better run." Krystal checks her watch and flashes an apologetic smile. "We're meeting commissioner with the other Scholars—see you later!"

They speed off before either Sohee or I can get a word in.

"Oh, pardon me. A VIP awaits." Sohee rolls her eyes. "Wow, that was annoying."